My Nerdy Friend

Uglies is the first book of a trilogy (later expanded to 4 books) that takes place in a dystopian (yay!) world where teenagers grow up in Ugly-town until they are 16, at which time they are moved across the river to Pretty-town where they undergo extensive plastic surgery to make them pretty. In this case, being “pretty” means looking pretty much like everyone else on the planet and becoming an empty-headed socialite in the process. One rebel group of citizens decides being pretty isn’t their life-goal and go into hiding, setting up an ugly-camp where people appreciate their differences rather than longing for sameness. Everything seems pretty peaceful, with everyone getting pretty much what they want, until the powers in pretty-town figure out where the uglies are hiding their camp and attack them. It turns out not every is happy with the idea of “live and let live” and there are obviously some darker forces at work here. The book ends more or less mid-battle with a very blatant segue into book two, “Pretties”.

The book is an enjoyable, teenage dystopian novel similar in vein to The Hunger Games and Divergent. I haven’t read Pretties yet, but only because other reading obligations have gotten in the way – I fully intend to read the entire 4-part trilogy, probably during a vacation. Certainly the idea of people being beautiful in their own skin is something that more teenagers, especially girls, need to hear more of. I applaud the author for undertaking this theme.

Rating: Borrow it, or buy it and then give it to a teenager you know.

aka Reliving my favourite Daily Show moments

There is no real reason to buy this book unless you LOVED watching Jon Stewart host The Daily Show (I did). It is a chronological collection of anecdotes in the form of short quotes and stories from former correspondents, writer and executives of the show sharing insights into key moments during Jon’s 18 year run.  The real insight came from understanding how Jon Stewart navigated the show from a fluff comedy bit to satire on the serious news issues of the day, forcing politicians and journalists to be accountable to their own nonsense. Lead by his brilliance and vision, other comedy shows followed suit and The Daily Show became the inspiration for Seth Myers’ “A Close Look” as well as changes to the tone of SNL’s “Weekend Update”, in addition to inspiring many brilliantly satirical late-night shows such as “Last Week Tonight”, “Full Frontal”, and “The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore”.

So yeah, if you loved the show, buy the book, because you’ll enjoy it too. If not, skip it.

The Murder Wall

A challenging book to read, it is not well written and abrupt transitions in the narrative give it a choppy feel that is difficult to get into to. The author uses several awkward techniques in her writing style, my least favourite being the use of ellipses to leave sentences and chapters unfinished. I understand the use of ellipses to evoke a feeling of suspense or intrigue in short communications such as email or text, although I would argue that careful use of language can achieve this without the use of obvious punctuation. But Hannah’s over-use of ellipses is highly distracting. She also has a habit of trying to evoke a sense of mystery by purposely withholding information in sentences or paragraphs and immediately following this up by a “reveal”. This is another unnecessary and distracting habit of her writing style that actually lessens the intrigue rather than adding to it. On top of it all, I never really connected with any of the characters in the book and therefore wasn’t invested in the outcome of the story. I think the author had all the elements of a potentially great story, but poor writing and choppy narrative took away from that.

Rating: Skip it.

Station Eleven

After reading this book last year and loving it, I picked it for my BBCE book club selection. I decided to reread it, partly because I loved it so much and partly because I wanted it to be fresh for the book club meeting. My original review is here.

As it happens, I found the book just as good the second time and feel like I picked up on a few things that I missed the first time, because I knew the story and wasn’t distracted by the suspense of not knowing what was coming. I also think I have some clarity about the ending, with respect to the Jeevan character, that I didn’t put together on my first read.

I’m going to leave it at that, because if you haven’t read it, I absolutely don’t want to spoil it!

Rating: Buy it. I’ve read it twice inside of just a few months and am glad that I did.

I Let You Go, by Clare Mackintosh

I have been procrastinating on this post for 2 full months. I really enjoyed this book, and have lots to say on it, however there is literally no way  I can think of to say it that isn’t in some way a spoiler. In fact, even saying that is enough to tell you that the book is spoil-able, which in itself is a bit of a spoiler…

I can say that it takes place in Wales. That’s nice. If I were to go to Wales this summer, I would actually seek out the story locations from the book, because the author does such a good job of making the locations very visual.

When I went to Ireland in 1994 with my girlfriend MCM we bicycled around the north coast. Once of the most wonderful and unexpected joys of cycling in Ireland is how immersed you can get in the sounds and smells and the feel of the country that you just can’t get from being in a car. You can hear the wind blowing across the fields and the sound of the mists hitting your rain jacket as you bike down a hill. You can feel the peace and quiet. You can smell the farms and the grass. Ireland is breathtakingly beautiful and the north coast has a ruggedness that you don’t expect from the Emerald Island (a deserved nickname if ever there was one). Clare’s description of the west coast of Wales kind of felt like this to me – like you could immerse yourself in her descriptions of the cliffs, the beach, the foreboding ocean.

Rating: Borrow it, read it and then let me know you’re done so we can talk about it. Don’t be put off by the back cover description, it’s not what you might think.

Foreigner

Book Three of the Quintaglio Ascension

My least favourite of the trilogy, Foreigner takes on more than it can chew (no pun intended). After introducing us to the Quintaglio society through the adventures of Asfan, the Galileo of their world, we move to book two where we meet Asfan’s son Toroca, the Darwin. In book three, we encounter Mokleb, the Freud. But in addition to the Freud story line, the Quintaglios discover a previously unknown set of islands where they find a race of “Others”. Unfortunately the Others invoke an extreme territorial instinct in the Quintaglios causing them to attack and kill any Others that try to interact with them. This eventually leads to the somewhat weak suggestion that the territorial instinct is just a psychosis (a weak way to further explain the Freud element) that was instilled in them at an early age by a religious culling of creche-mates instituted in order to control population. Meanwhile, another group of Quintaglios excavates a crashed spaceship, releasing a swarm of nanobots that use rock and dirt to build a set of space elevators and a new spaceship, which the Quintaglios need to escape their doomed homeland.

All in all, it’s just too much. The Freud story line felt forced to me, and distracted from the important mission which was to find a way to travel into space in search of a new home before their planet/moon is torn apart by extreme tidal forces in a few short generations.

Rating: Borrow the trilogy, but temper your expectations.

The Heart Goes Last

We had a very lengthy and interesting conversation about this book in my mini book club. The writing seems quite light and almost silly, especially when considering a few of Atwood’s more concentrated books, like The Robber Bride and The Edible Woman. However, on reflection, we all agreed that she packed a ton of thought-provoking insight into few words, and hid it in plain sight in simple language and sentence structure.

Her lead characters, Charmaine and Stan, are difficult to like at first, putting possessions and status above honesty and true happiness. In following this path they find themselves installed in an artificial game-show-style community where dissenters may or may not be being killed off and fed to livestock (many things are left as innuendo for readers to draw their own conclusions). Eventually Charmaine and Stan are both forced to re-evaluated their choices and make tough decisions about their new lifestyle which will ultimately fee them from their (literal) prison.

The ending is probably the most controversial part of the book. Does Atwood, a staunch feminist, write an ending in which Charmaine agrees to be programmed into the perfect, adoring wife? Or does she free her from being trapped by societal expectations into merely playing a role?

Rating: Buy it, and add it to your Atwood collection. Love it or hate it, you will want to revisit this book again in the future.

Fossil Hunter

Book Two of the Quintaglio Ascension

In this trilogy, the Quintaglio race discovers that their world is a spherical moon orbiting a Jupiter-like planet, and that the tidal forces resulting from their proximity to the planet will break their world apart in a few hundred “kilodays” (a mere 4-5 generations). This forces them to figure out how to advance from a Rennaisance-like culture to a space-faring population capable of inter-planetary travel, before their world is destroyed. In book one, we encounter Asfan, the Quintaglio equivalent of Galileo with a bit of Copernicus thrown in, who discovers the true nature of their world and throws the religious order into a tizzy.

In book two, Asfan’s son takes on the role of Darwin, exploring the southern pole and discovering a plethora of life forms that lead him to a theory of evolution. He is also an archaeologist, discovering an ancient spaceship that may hold the secret to developing space travel. This second book is much richer than the first one,  introducing a “Watcher” who is apparently responsible for transplanting the dinosaurs from earth millions of years earlier to help ensure their survival while permitting mammals to develop on earth itself. There is also a battle for leadership, a murder mystery, and a population control problem threatening to lead to all-out territorial war.

It’s a real pleasure to read this series. I love how Sawyer has created his characters taking into account likely dinosaur characteristics such as regeneration of extremities, territorial-ism and how that impacts personal space and carnivorism (to rashly make up a word). Brilliant.

Rating: I’m starting to think you should just buy the whole trilogy.

Far-Seer

Book One of the Quintaglio Ascension

Far-Seer is the first book in a trilogy that takes place on a world where dinosaurs rather than homo sapiens have evolved into the intelligent species. Book one follows the discoveries of a young astrologer who embarks on a pilgrimage to witness the Face of God. On this journey, he borrows a “far-seer” and instead discovers that his people live on a spherical moon that orbits a Jupiter-like planet, and that their proximity to the planet is endangering the world on which they live. He is essentially the Galileo of this fantasy world and similarly finds himself condemned and punished for these “beliefs”. The book concludes just as he manages to convince a critical mass of Quintaglios that his discoveries are, in fact, the truth.

The author has thoughtfully created a society of saurian carnivores who must be cautious about how they interact in order to avoid triggering instinctive territorial responses, and who use religious rituals to control population growth, territory expansion and hunting/eating practices.

Rating: Buy it.